International Partners

From left, illustrations of the Mars Express orbiter, the ExoMars 2016 orbiter and the ExoMars rover.

NASA contributed two Electra radio communications systems to the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (European Space Agency) and assisted with the navigation, tracking and data return of the spacecraft. In addition, NASA is contributing the mass spectrometer and the main electronics units for the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA). The MOMA instrument, central to the ExoMars 2020 rover mission (European Space Agency), will allow detection and characterization of organic molecules on Mars. The ExoMars rover will include a drill that will allow sampling of the subsurface of Mars to a depth of almost two meters. The MOMA instrument is led Principal Investigator Fred Goesmann of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany. The Deputy Principal Investigator is Francois Raulin of the University of Paris. Will Brinckerhoff of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the project scientist for MOMA.

NASA also supports navigation and tracking of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), currently in orbit around Mars. The two agencies have an agreement to work on future Mars missions.

The United Arab Emirates is planning a mission to Mars (the Hope orbiter) to launch in 2020. NASA is working on an agreement to assist the UAE with the mission.

NASA is planning to help develop one of the remote sensing instruments for the Martian Moon Exploration mission (MMX), currently being developed for launch in 2020s by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).